


At Entertainment's Heart

by tieria



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: 5+1 Things, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-24 09:11:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4913632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tieria/pseuds/tieria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dennis finds Ruri, which means he has to green-light Academia's invasion of Heartland.<br/>That doesn't mean that he has to do it right away.<br/>:::<br/>Or, Dennis and Ruri strike up a friendship in the weeks leading up to the invasion. It leads to more discussions between them than Dennis perhaps would have liked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Entertainment's Heart

**Author's Note:**

> half ruri headcanons after seeing episode 75, half me not being able to shut up about Dennis disguised as a character study, and 100% self-indulgent fic  
> (friendship, but could be pre-relationship if you squint, I guess)  
> the only thing canon about this Ruri is her appearance

  1.        Home is Where the Heart Is



His target lingered after the show, resetting her deck and dropping a few bills into the hat resting on the table.

Dennis watched her out of the corner of his eye as he said goodbye to a family that had stayed, bowing and handing the oldest child a rose pulled from thin air, much to her delight.

The family turned their backs, and Dennis straightened, turned to the lingering girl. “Thank you for participating in my show,” he said, a wink and a smile settling naturally on his face.

The girl didn’t roll her eyes, but Dennis could tell she wanted to. “You think you’re so charming, don’t you?” the words were harsh, but she didn’t say it with any malice, more a friendly exasperation. His smile softened, just for a moment.

“Dennis Macfield,” he said, holding out a hand.

“Kurosaki Ruri,” she replied, and shook his hand firmly. She paused, then- “I haven’t seen you around here before. Do you live in Heartland?”

Dennis nodded. “I got here a few days ago. Moved all the way from Broadway.”

Ruri thought for a moment. Something flickered in her eyes, and her expression settled. “Then let me show you around a little. Heartland’s a pretty big place, and there’s places you’ll miss if you’re only looking at the guidebooks.”

Dennis weighed his options for a moment. Really, now that he’d found the bracelet girl, he had no reason to accept her offer. But the invasion would take time to finalize, and the more information he could get on her, the better.

“Thank you,” he said, and let her lead him down the bright Heartland streets.

:::

The café she led them to was a surprisingly muted building, a single story affair nestled between two crowded boutiques. The coffee was amazing and surprisingly cheap, and they talked idly over pastries and coffee at a table near the window. Ruri told him of Heartland’s parks, of courtyards and open side streets, of where her favorite restaurants were and what was best for the price on every menu.

Occasionally he recognized a street name from the invasion plans, a neighborhood from the boundaries of a certain class’ hunting game. He said nothing, but took a pointed sip of coffee to hide his expression when she mentioned the carnival taking place in a month. Heartland wouldn’t last that long.

“We should stay in touch,” Ruri said, and Dennis wasn’t sure exactly how the conversation had gotten to this point. “Here, let me see your duel disk. I’ll add in the caller information.”

Dennis hesitated. “Uh, well, that’s kind of…”

“What, you’re going to tell me you don’t duel? You have cards, I’ve seen them. I dueled you after your magician flew me through the sky, if you remember.”

It was ridiculous to hesitate now, and Dennis mentally chided himself for the slip. His duel disk had been modified well in advance of his arrival in Heartland, any important traces of Academia wiped clean.

He handed it over with a smile that fell just short of authentically sheepish- if Ruri noticed, she paid him no mind.

 

  1.        Birds of a Feather



“Do you like birds?” he asked as they sat in the park after another one of his shows- no longer necessary now that he’d found Ruri, but an enjoyable way to pass the time while stranded in Heartland, at the very least. (The fact that Ruri kept coming to watch was just an added bonus, an easy way of keeping track of her.)

“Hmm?” Ruri hummed, turning from her lunch to meet his eyes.

Dennis waved at the pigeons beginning to cluster at their feet, looking for crumbs. “You wear a lot of feather accessories.”

Ruri hummed again, contemplative this time. Ripping the crust off her sandwich and crumbling it for the birds below, she replied, “I guess so. It’s not so much I like them, really. More like… I’m kind of jealous? I always wanted to be able to fly away. It has to be an amazing feeling, soaring through the sky so freely like that. My brother though… He’s a whole different story.”

Dennis turned to her, surprised. None of the bracelet girls were supposed to have siblings- most of them shouldn’t even have living relatives, according to the preliminary reports Academia had created. “Your brother?”

“Yeah. His name’s Shun, written like _falcon_. And let me tell you, he might be halfway to being a pro duelist, but he’s still a total birdbrain.”

Dennis raised an eyebrow. “Birdbrain?”

“Oh, shut up,” Ruri replied. “I mean, his aces are all _falcons_. You’ll understand if you meet him. He can only process one emotion at a time, I swear.”

“And he wants to be a pro? That doesn’t sound like much of an entertainer to me.”

Ruri shrugged. “You’ll get it if you see him duel.”

:::

And he did see him duel, eventually. Dennis snuck into the pro dueling school on a slow Monday afternoon, lurking in the background as students took the field to duel. He hung around, bored, occasionally taking mental notes to send back to Academia. Dennis had assumed that the students here would be Heartland’s brightest and best- and they weren’t _bad_ duelists, certainly, but Dennis was fairly sure even a Red could handle one of them with no trouble.

He heard someone call Shun’s name, and his attention snapped back to the duel unfolding below.

Dennis watched with a critical eye. Shun had the skills to be a pro- an aggressive playing style, a single-minded intensity he had seen from Ruri once or twice, and a good enough handle on his deck that no matter how badly he was cornered, he managed to open a path straight through the opposition. He’d put them on equal ground, even.

He could be a pro, Dennis thought, but he certainly wasn’t an entertainer. But at least he smiled when he dueled, and that was as good a start as any.

 

  1.        The Entertainer’s Mask



Ruri called him late one night, and Dennis dragged himself out of bed to answer the call, crossing the floor of his tiny, Academia-provided apartment in a few broad strides.

He started to greet her, but before he could get more than a word out, Ruri was speaking over him, loud and determined.

“I want to be your assistant.”

Dennis let that settle for a long moment, staring at Ruri through the screen. Fire blazed wild behind her red-rimmed eyes, slightly puffy, her mouth set in a hard line. “You mean…”

“In your shows,” Ruri clarified, “I want to be your assistant. Every magician needs one, right?”

Dennis blinked, considerably more awake now. He wasn’t going to question her logic, but…

“Dennis,” she said, and there was no pleading to her voice, but the request carried clearly all the same.

“Okay. You’ll have to learn a few things first, though. Meet me tomorrow morning in the plaza?”

“You mean today? It’s Thursday, Dennis. I have school. I’ll meet you afterwards?”

“Sure. See you, Ruri.”

“See you later!” she replied, sounding significantly more cheerful now that she’d gotten her way. She hung up with a smile, and Dennis checked the time, ticking steadily closer to one in the morning. Ruri was right- it was Thursday. Strange, he thought, how time had started to slip away from him in the few weeks he had been away from Academia and its strict schedules of classes and training.

He wondered, briefly, if he should be worried.

:::

Ruri met him in the plaza that afternoon, out of breath but with a smile pulling at her features already. “Okay, let’s do this!”

They sat side by side on a bench, and Dennis taught her the first simple tricks that came to mind. Sleight of hand, mostly, subtle ways to tuck cards into the pockets of her dress and pull out flowers, tricks with fake cards packed with confetti, and the basics of distracting the audience from what was really going on. Ruri picked up some things better than others- she twirled and her hand of cards was replaced with a handful of roses, she mixed up which card was the real and which was the fake and had it explode in her hands as the real card fluttered gently to the ground.

She looked incredibly dismayed staring down at the mess of glitter her hands and dress had become. Dennis struggled to hold back a laugh. “Any chance you know a good way to get all this stuff off?”

Dennis shook his head and forced himself back to a neutral expression. “Sorry, you’re stuck with it. Think of it like an improvement?”

Her head snapped up to glare.

(He found glitter on her for the next three days. He pointed it out every time, to which Ruri finally smacked him gently over the head. She never made that mistake again, he was pleased to notice.)

:::

“Okay,” Dennis finally announced at the end of one of their afternoon sessions, “That’s it. You’re officially out of training.”

Ruri shot him a triumphant look. “See? Told you I could do it.”

“Here. Congratulations, Ruri.”

Dennis handed her the mask, and watched her face carefully as she looked it over. He’d embellished one of the more elegant of his masks, added dark, sparking gems at the corner of the eyes and attached deep brown feathers with a slight green tinge to one of the edges.

“It’s so pretty,” she said, trying it on and reaching for her compact, admiring the mirrored shine of the gems in the twilight sun. “Thank you. Why a mask, though?”

Slipping one of his own on, Dennis replied, “Part of an entertainer’s magic is that no one knows who you are under the mask.”

“You don’t wear one,” Ruri accused, and Dennis chucked.

“That’s because no one here knows who I am.”

 

  1.        Dueling



Their latest show had ended to applause and smiles on the faces of the departing crowd, and Dennis had slipped away to grab drinks for Ruri and himself. He returned to find Ruri waiting for him with intent written sharp across her posture.

“Duel me.”

“Huh?” Dennis set down the drinks and cast a curious glance at Ruri, who met his gaze with single-minded intensity.

“I said, duel me.” Her duel disk was already set on her arm, and Dennis, as was becoming alarmingly usual with Ruri, had absolutely no idea how he was going to get out of this.

“Didn’t we just duel…?”

“Dennis, come on. Everyone in Heartland duels for fun once and a while, and we haven’t actually dueled outside of a show before. Besides, you wouldn’t use your cards in your show so much if you didn’t like them a lot.”

_‘If you didn’t like them a lot’_ \- Dennis had never thought much of it, really. They were his cards, but not _his_ cards, not the Antique Gears resting in his extra deck, waiting patiently for their turn in the spotlight. They were props, symbols of a mask and a fool’s show.

_“Dennis-“_

He threw up his hands and ducked his head. “Okay, okay. We’ll duel, we’ll duel.”

:::

He managed to get through the first few turns with minimal damage, but if Dennis had been expecting any kind of leniency from Ruri, she proved him wrong at every turn. He breathed a short sigh of relief when he finally managed to get two level fours on the field. Trapeze Magician appeared from the overlay network with a laugh, and Dennis sent Ruri a wink and his best charming smile.

“So? How’s that?”

Ruri rolled her eyes. “Duel’s not over yet, Dennis.”

:::

“Oh man,” Ruri said as the solid vision faded around them, “I thought you’ve just been playing a part this entire time, but you’re really not that good at this, are you?”

If he was fighting at full strength, Dennis would have been offended. As it was, Dennis couldn’t help but agree with her, just in the slightest. He was fairly decent at playing Entermages against the students at Academia (and the look on their faces when he beat them with _Xyz_ monsters is a sight Dennis will never forget) but playing Xyz against a Heartland native was a far cry from fumbling around with Fusion kids who had no practical experience with them.

Instead, he just shrugged. “I don’t duel much outside of my shows.”

“I can kinda tell,” Ruri replied, crossing the field towards him and holding out a hand. “But your deck is pretty decent. Let me see.”

She set his deck down on the table and started sorting through cards as Dennis watched, finally opening their forgotten drinks. Piles became stacks which became clusters and lines, and Ruri explained each combo as she went along, making alterations at Dennis’ suggestion.

It became a ritual, then- Dennis taught Ruri a series of increasingly elaborate tricks and illusions, and Ruri taught Dennis how to duel like a Heartland native, and the days slipped by in a hazy sort of peace Dennis didn’t want to name.

(The deadline for his report to Academia drew close too soon for Dennis’ liking. He sent everything- information about the schools, gathering spots perfect for hunting games, Ruri-

He sent everything, and resolved himself not to think about it until the day came.)

 

  1.        Everything Ends



Dennis woke to the finalized invasion plans blinking at him from his disk resting on the nightstand. A notification instructed him to memorize them before the invasion began tomorrow.

The first page of the plan contained instructions on how to restore his disk’s former functions. He restored everything but the distinctive sword shape- there was still a day yet, and he wouldn’t put it past some overenthusiastic kid to unintentionally reveal him. (Or worse, Ruri. But he banished that thought before it could gain any hold. No one would know what the sword shape meant anyway- and anyone who saw it wouldn’t be around to tell anyone, given a little over twenty-four hours.)

He resigned himself to spending the rest of the morning memorizing boundary lines and formations, and settled down with a leftover pastry and a cup of coffee. He flipped the page and was greeted with a list of targets, lined up nicely in priority order. Dennis skimmed the page. Not much had changed from the initial plan, really- target the infrastructure. Destroy roads leading out of Heartland first, then let the hunting games begin.

He was halfway to turning the page when his eyes caught on the name of the school, listed as top priority, set dead in the center of the city. No class could lay claim to the school, he remembered, memories of Academia suddenly fresh in his mind, because it was going to be a free-for-all. Plenty of young duelists to challenge, all gathered in one place, like lambs for the slaughter-

“Hello?” Ruri was staring up at him from the screen before he even realized he’d called her. “I’m in school right now, so you’d better have a good reason for calling me.”

Or so she said, but she certainly wasn’t whispering. With any luck, he’d caught her before the teacher entered the room.

“Sorry, I guess I got excited?” it came out more of a question than he had intended, and he moved on quickly. “So, I had an idea for a show, and I thought we could test it out tomorrow morning. What do you think? I’ve never tried something like this before, so I figured we should try it together.”

Ruri seemed amused. “Uh, Dennis? Tomorrow’s Tuesday. School, remember? Just because you don’t go doesn’t mean I don’t have to.”

“Aw, come on, Ruri. Just this once?”

“It’s that important to you, huh?” She didn’t give Dennis the time to reply. “Okay, fine. I’ll meet you tomorrow morning. The usual place?”

Dennis shifted the screen around subtly and took a quick glance at the map. The central park wouldn’t do, the Obelisk Force was scheduled to march straight through. “How about the smaller park? It wouldn’t be good if anyone saw the truth behind the trick, now would it?”

There was a small commotion on Ruri’s end of the line, and she nodded before hanging up. “Tomorrow morning, then.”

:::

Ruri stared down at him from where she hung upside-down with legs hooked over Trapeze Magician’s bar. “No way. If you think I’m freefalling, you’re wrong.”

“Ruri,” Dennis implored, a collection of materialized Entermages gathering around him, “It’s not that far. It’ll be like flying.”

“No, it’s definitely a freefall. And I’m definitely not doing it.”

“Ruri… Please. Trust me?”

She sighed, then started to swing gently from the bar. “If I die, this is your fault.”

Trapeze Magician swung, and Ruri unhooked her legs to fly through the air, Trapeze Magician dissolving in a flash of golden light. Ruri’s long hair and skirt billowed out behind her as she fell, and Dennis readied himself for the catch. He could practically hear the gasps of the audience as Ruri twisted in midair, could feel them waiting with bated breath as she started to fall from her graceful arc-

The Entermages at his feet vanished in a cloud of gold, and Ruri’s fall was slowed just enough by the waves that the real solid vision created for her to land gently in Dennis’ arms. The imaginary audience broke into a cheer as he set her back on her feet with a nervous smile. “See? I told you it would be like flying.”

Ruri paused, taking an unusually long time to gather her words- but he never heard what she was planning to say.

An explosion from afar overpowered her as she started to speak, and they both turned that way with alarm painted across their faces- one more real than the other’s.

“What was that?” Ruri said, immediately before another explosion rang out in the opposite direction. Another from the north, another from the south- they couldn’t yet see the Giants, but they’d be crawling into vision soon, leaving smoke and ruin in their wake.

Another, then another, drawing steadily closer- Ruri went rigid at his side, and he turned to follow her gaze- the first Giant hovered into view, ripping the spire off a skyscraper as it went. “What…”

Dennis grabbed her hand, forced her gaze to meet his. “Run.”

And they did. Dennis led her down winding street after winding street, taking shortcuts Ruri had shown him weeks ago as screams carried on the wind. No place in the city was safe, but some routes were less populated than others, and the longer Dennis could help her play keep away, the better.

They took a moment to catch their breath in a back alley, and Dennis could practically taste the smoke hanging low in the air, dyeing the sky in shifting shades of grey and black.

Ruri looked as if there were a thousand questions she wanted to ask- many of which Dennis had the answers to. In the end, she settled on, “Where are we going?”

“The stadium,” he replied, and Ruri nodded slowly. It wasn’t a good place to hide by any means, but it was central enough that others would be fleeing there as well once the main school collapsed. With any luck, Dennis thought, it would be the strong ones.

“Then-“ Ruri started, but Dennis caught a familiar flash of blue out of the corner of his eye, and he stepped in front of her reflexively, staring the newcomer down.

“Finally,” the Obelisk Force member drawled, “I haven’t seen any Xyz scum in ages. I was starting to think we got them all already.”

He heard the Hound Dog before he saw it, and he summoned quickly, parried off its attack with the top card of his deck. “Ruri,” he said, turning his head just slightly to give her a pointed glance, “Run.”

She slid her duel disk onto her arm. “No. Let me-“

“Ruri, please. There’s no time. One of us has to make it.”

She looked like she was about to fight him, determination keeping her hands steady even as fear lingered around the edges of her eyes- but she thought, for just a moment, and gave Dennis a sharp nod.

“Make sure you come back, Dennis.” With that, Ruri reluctantly turned and fled back down the alley.

“Aww,” the Obelisk Force member cooed, “How cute. Too bad we’re just going to hunt her down too, scum.”

A switch flipped. Dennis’ posture straightened, the warmth drained from his voice. A new mask settled over his eyes, cold and empty and ready for the hunt. Dennis took a few steps closer, flashed the Obelisk Force member the pin on his collar. “Watch who you’re calling scum.”

The man panicked, tried badly to cover it. “Sorry, I. I don’t- that is, I didn’t-“

Dennis waved him off. “It’s not a problem. But that girl’s off limits, unless you want to get on the Professor’s bad side. Go hunt somewhere else.”

The man nodded, then started walking down the street, trying to escape Dennis’ glare as soon as possible. Dennis sighed, turned around to head back into the alley- only to find a girl with betrayal in her eyes waiting for him.

“You… You were a spy? The whole time you were doing those shows, you..?” For a moment, it was Ruri standing before him, throwing accusations-

Dennis blinked, and long purple hair became short and black, eyes with determination cutting through the fear became shallow and nervous. Dennis didn’t recognize the girl standing before him, quaking even as she readied herself to duel.

“Hey,” he yelled over his shoulder, hoping the Obelisk Force member hadn’t wandered too far. Dennis was rewarded with the sound of his boots, hard against the ground as the man ran back down the street towards him.

“Y-Yes?”

He turned his back to the girl, looking more and more that she regretted being brave.

“I found you some prey.”

 

       +1. Without Words

Yuuri took his time arriving in the ruined Heartland. Dennis’ skin crawled, his impatience clawing at him from the inside out, trying to escape. He wasn’t at the top of the chain of command, but he was high enough up that idiots thought it was a good idea to try and contact him for instructions while he was _undercover_ with the very Xyz remnants they were trying to hunt. The remnants- the resistance, they were calling themselves, as if they were putting up a fight rather than skittering like mice through the ruins, just trying to survive- had picked up a duel disk from Academia at some point, and now more of them than he would’ve liked could turn him into a card if he was discovered.

But he had managed to bide his time, and his perceived work as a member of an outer group of the resistance got them into the main shelter with ease.

He smiled and waved at Ruri, and she returned his smile with a friendly but strained one of her own. She didn’t stay to chat, not with water to be delivered, and Dennis was surprised how relieved he felt by that. Yuuri’s presence wasn’t something he had any intentions of explaining.

:::

In the end, he watched from the rooftops as Yuuri chased her through the streets, cornering her in a destroyed alley.

“Come with us,” Yuuri told her well into their duel, “and I’ll tell our soldiers to avoid this area from now on.”

It was a lie, one that Ruri wasn’t naïve enough to believe. But it was also hope, something that had been crushed beneath the rubble of Heartland’s ruin. Tempting, at the very least.

She didn’t accept. Dennis secretly felt a swell of pride for her.

Ruri certainly wasn’t a bad duelist by any means- their time together had proved that, if nothing else- but in the end, she simply didn’t have any idea what she was up against. Yuuri’s dragon cut her down and cards scattered like splattered blood across the alley.

Ruri collapsed, and in a violet flash, both of them disappeared from the scene. Dennis would have protested how much evidence he left behind, but really, he thought, perhaps it was better to leave them something to remember her by.

Instead, he took the extra time to head back down to the streets, looking for a resistance member. He stumbled upon one not even three blocks from the alley, and he put on his best frantic impression, out of breath and stumbling when he clapped the boy on the shoulder.

“Help,” he said between heavy breaths, “Get… Get Kurosaki. His sister… They caught us off guard, we split up-“

The boy snapped to it, racing down the street and back towards the shelter. As soon as he rounded the corner, Dennis collected himself and walked back to the rooftop. Yuuri was waiting for him at the top, impatient. “Oh, you’re back.”

“Taking care of a few last loose ends,” he replied.

“Hm. Then let’s go. We have new assignments waiting for us.”

Dennis cast one last look out over the city- seeing not the vibrant Heartland that had greeted him a month ago, but not entirely seeing the bleak ruins stretching out before him in reality either- more something in between, a world that perhaps could have been.

“Yeah,” he said, “Let’s go.”

 

_???_

“Are you nervous?” Dennis teased Ruri as she adjusted her mask.

“Kind of terrified, actually.” There was a glimmer of nervousness in her eyes, hidden between shifting layers of excitement and confidence. A good mixture- she’d do fine.

“You have everything you need?”

Ruri made a quick double check, then nodded.

“Then hurry. Our audience will be arriving soon. We can’t spoil the surprise before the show’s even begun, now can we?”

:::

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Dennis began, throwing all his bravado behind it, “It’s showtime!”

He gave his deck a dramatic shuffle as the crowd applauded. “But what’s this? I can’t seem to find Trapeze Magician…”

He flipped cards over, pretending to search his deck. The audience murmured amongst themselves for a long moment, wondering what the trick was this time- and then a single child’s eyes lit up as they pointed towards the sky behind Dennis. “Look, look!”

Ruri and Trapeze Magician came soaring out from behind the cluster of trees in the center of the park, circling high above the audience’s heads. Ruri balanced easily on the bar, holding on with one hand as she threw fake cards over the audience.

“You can’t find us because we’re right here!” she said as the cards exploded into confetti and roses.

Dennis feigned surprise as Trapeze Magician descended, and Ruri jumped to the ground, landing light on her feet. She twirled, a flower appearing in one hand as she faced the audience again.

“For you,” she said, bending down to hand the flower to the child who had first spotted her.

The audience applauded as she stood up, and the mask didn’t cover the faint blush on her cheeks- though from embarrassment or pride, Dennis couldn’t tell. She turned to him, energy radiating from her like light from the sun. “Today, Trapeze Magician is fighting for me.”

“You can’t steal Trapeze Magician away from me,” he protested, and Ruri grinned, turning to the audience with a knowing look.

“Then, is that a challenge?”

“Of course! I can’t have a show without my symbol, after all.”

:::

The crowd had dispersed, and Ruri laughed, still riding the high of a successful performance. “That was amazing.”

Her happiness was infectious, and Dennis couldn’t help but smile along with her. “All thanks to you.”

Ruri kept laughing. “You give me _way_ too much credit. You’re a really amazing entertainer, Dennis.”

:::

Dennis stared down at Trapeze Magician, the card suddenly feeling so very flimsy between his fingers. His mask was gone, and that final action card had been Trapeze Magician’s- his past self’s- last gift.

He’d come full circle, from one of Academia’s best and brightest to a simple street performer and back again. He was a spy, and one that produced results at that. Information that led to a successful invasion, ensuring that the bracelet girls came to no harm by others’ hands, words that drove wedges between so-called teammates- he’d proved he could accomplish anything, now. He could have made it official then, crushed the card between his fingers and left it for trash. It wasn’t as if he would be using it again, he rationalized. Academia had no more need for spies.

He tucked the card carefully into his pocket instead. And if anyone happened to find it and confront him about it somewhere down the line, well… It was _his_ card, after all.


End file.
